Krauthammer: Ryan Telling Trump, ‘You’re Going To Have To Reckon With The Conservatives, Even If You Aren’t One’

Columnist Charles Krauthammer stated that House Speaker Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) reluctannce to support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is him wanting “to establish a center of power and a kind of home for the conservative wing” and saying to Trump, “you’re going to have to reckon with the conservatives, even if you aren’t one” on Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel.

Krauthammer said, [relevant remarks begin around 3:35] “I think it is true that there are tactical reasons for Ryan doing this to protect his members. The more cynical comments have been about he’s looking for his own run in 2020 in the future. He’s trying to appease his donors. I think that’s rubbish. I think what’s happened here, if you step back for a second, the Republicans have experienced the biggest ideological earthquake of a major party in our lifetime. 50, 60 years of conservatism has now yielded to a leader who’s not a conservative, but who’s a populist. That’s a big deal. And I think what the Ryan statement is, the Ryan equivocation is, he’s saying, if the party is now going to be split between the leader, the populist, and the old line conservatives, whether they’re establishment or not doesn’t matter. You’ve got establishment and non-establishment. He wants to establish a center of power and a kind of home for the conservative wing. He wants to do it through policy, which he’ll propose. That’s who he is. He’s a policy wonk. He’s a reformicon, the young reformers, who have ideas on how to fix the country, from the point of view of a conservative philosophy. And what he’s saying to Trump, yes, you won. You won the popular vote. You deserve what you have. But you’re going to have to reckon with the conservatives, even if you aren’t one, and that’s what the meeting will be about, will there be a change in policy and adjustment in the platform, as a way to say we’re going to try to make the two philosophies coexist.”